


Insomnia

by ourna_kokichi



Category: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dreamwalking, Eventual Quentin Smith/David King, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mild Gore, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-09 12:16:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15267321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourna_kokichi/pseuds/ourna_kokichi
Summary: The Entity, despite its vile nature, adhered to a certain set of rules.These rules dictated everything. It was a cruel regime, but a constant - Quentin at least thought It would protect him when he was alone, wandering his own dreams in a fitful rest.But now the rules have been changed.





	1. Prologue

The dream was cold, this time.

 

Of course, most of the dreams Quentin witnessed in the realm of the Entity were cold. It reflected the odd, and vaguely uncomfortable feeling the world itself gave forth - a facsimile of what had been, but is no longer. And thus, no longer familiar or welcoming to anyone.

He chose to wander. It was all he could do.

This time, Quentin found himself back where it all started, in the ghostly little town of Springwood. He knew it wasn’t real; when he was taken, the image of his world was taken as well for the Entity to corrupt, and changed to fit the trials that he was forced to take a part in. If his opinion of the Badham preschool hadn’t already been so low, the Entity’s twisted version of it may have just changed his mind. 

While it was all still just a dream, there was not much else to do in the world besides simply walk and observe. Despite Quentin’s skill with walking the dream world, he was unable to create new things or manipulate what existed already within others - he was simply a dreamwalker, a travelling observer of things he could not change. Only the true master of dreams could accomplish that. Trudging past the grimy swing set, Quentin sighed and halfheartedly kicked the rusted metal. It didn’t hurt. 

Only _he_ could truly control the full extent of the dreams here. 

And the thought of _him_ made Quentin’s skin crawl. 

Making his way into the preschool building, Quentin pondered on the purpose of what he was doing. He drifted his fingers along the yellowed drawings on the walls, distant memories of laughing children and scribbling with crayons returning to him for a short moment. He noticed that his hands felt slightly wet, and brought them back to his face to inspect them - paint. 

Of course, Nancy’s drawings were still here. Most of the pictures were hers, after all, with her scribbly style and care written all over them despite the years between her creating those and the works she made before he was taken away. Smiling softly, he looked back to the still-drying painting that he had touched - a small outdoor scene, with a girl in a green dress playing hopscotch with a boy wearing a blue shirt.

“I guess I should be thankful it wasn’t you who was taken, shouldn’t I?”, Quentin mumbled, sadly thumbing the edges of the painting.

He wished he could take it back with him, but it was all part of the dream. Nothing was real here - it was hard to accept that when he hardly had anything else left to remember the real world by.

He sighed, continuing down the foggy hallway. 

No doubt the Entity had given him this… gift. It was the only reason he could think of that explained how he was able to do this - It was capable of giving him and the others wonderful talents and abilities in the trials to give them the hope to escape, but also the same for the monsters who were set upon them to stop them from escaping. For everyone else, these powers were taken away when they returned to the campfire to rest; yet every time Quentin slipped away he found himself able to walk among this strange new world, much like his tormentor before this. 

Was it some sort of reward? A respite for performing so well? He didn’t know. He had no way of finding out. 

He still hadn’t been woken for a trial, so Quentin slipped into one of the old classrooms to rummage around for some chalk. He knew this particular realm like the back of his hand, and it hadn’t taken long after discovering his power to grow bored of simply seeing the worlds he was held captive in without the fear of needing to escape from a killer. Thus, scribbling on the old boards with some chalk helped to get rid of some boredom. The drawings never stayed, but that was probably a good thing - he was no Nancy when it came to art. 

He eventually found a small box of mismatched chunks of chalk, all in various states of decay. Unfortunately the more exciting colours seemed to be the worse ones in the pack, with the occasional bit of mould and dirt all over the once vibrant sticks of colour. Oh well, there was nothing to be done about it. He just simply couldn’t summon his own items into these worlds, no matter how much he had tried.

A sudden ringing sound began to play behind him, and Quentin’s eyes widened in panic. 

Freddy hadn’t _ever_ appeared to him in these dream worlds directly (which was surprising due to his nature), but the realisation that he most likely could roam these dreams much like Quentin always lingered at the back of his mind - the Entity didn’t play _fair_. If It had granted Quentin this power, he needed to be watchful that he wasn’t ambushed by the Nightmare while he roamed around. 

Deciding to wield the chalk like a sword, he whirled around, ready to strike at the demon despite the feeble nature of his own weapon. He had destroyed him once with paint thinner and a match, _surely_ he could manage with just a stick of chalk and his wits- 

On the floor was a small toy car, the batteries long dead, beeping and whistling the alphabet to him.

 

...

 

Nevermind. He was still safe for now, and wouldn’t need to waste his chalk as a shitty weapon. 

Turning back to the board, he decided on a dog this time. Simple, quick, and fun; it was never too hard to draw a dog. David had mentioned he had one, didn’t he? Back before all of this happened to him.

Quentin tried to recall David’s excited descriptions and stories of his beloved Boxer, and slowly pressed the rotted chalk to the board. He knew the chalk made horrid noises when used, and no amount of preparation could prevent his winces when the first shrieks of protest were made by the dirty substance. Nonetheless, he settled into a rhythm of sketching and rubbing like he always had. Nancy had done it like this, he remembered. And Nancy made everything look beautiful.

He wished David was here. He would know how to draw his dog better than Quentin ever could. 

In fact, Quentin had been trying to teach David how to walk in these dream worlds for quite a while now. He had once indulged him with stories of the smoggy buildings, still rotten to the core but otherwise untouched, spared from the wrath of whatever killers were set upon them in the previous trials. It was hardly something to be excited about, but in this realm Quentin would take what he could get. David seemed excited enough about it, and had begged for him to teach him how to do it also.

 

_“Listen, right, I once saw a shitload of moonshine in one of ‘em barns. Couldn’t grab any… was gettin’ chased by that rabbit bitch. You an’ me, we could go and get well smashed. And it wouldn’t even be real! No hangovers or nothin’.”_

 

Quentin laughed softly at the memory, making more and more lines as he started to clean up the sketch. For a self-proclaimed hardened rugby star, David would get excited over the smallest of things. The sheer boredom of the Entity’s trials must change people, make them happy and excitable for any small deviation from the chilling normal activities they had to do - even a battler couldn’t withstand the harsh reality of their situation for too long. You’d go crazy. Most of the survivors that came before already had.

He would as well, eventually.

It wasn’t a nice thought, and Quentin’s quiet reverie slowly dissipated back into the cold, hard reality of where he was. He looked down at his chalk-covered hands, noticing the small stump of chalk was all that remained of the large lump he had started out with. Time passed in a different way in the dream world, and what felt like only a few minutes of messing around with chalk most likely translated into a good few hours back where his real body lay. A trial would be starting soon, most likely.

Scowling, Quentin dragged his eyes back up to the board. The lines looked _vaguely_ like some sort of animal; it looked sad, with droopy eyes and sagging ears. The texture of the chalk on the board made the whole figure look rotted, filled with some sort of gross bacteria. There was _no_ way this drawing would even look remotely similar to the Boxer that had been described to him so long ago.

Thank God nobody else would ever see this.

He tossed the chalk somewhere behind his back - it’s not like anybody is going to care that he defaced the school anymore, is it? - and decided to walk back to wait for someone else to wake him up. The school hallways gave off an even eerier vibe as Quentin rushed through them a second time, the faint sound of ghostly giggling children no longer giving the bittersweet feeling it used to. He hated this school, hated this realm, and he wanted to _wake up._

Quentin had walked the dream world plenty of times. As he rushed past the entrance to the preschool, he recalled how he knew most of them by heart now - the colours of the sky, the different amount of fog and dust in each, and even the changes in the groaning cacophony in the background that he can only hope is just the decaying metal structures of the cars he ran past, crying out for some sort of care and maintenance. They never changed, which Quentin was almost thankful for; he relished the few reliable unchanging things he had left, even if they had to be these stupid fake dream worlds that he was given free reign of.

Looking up, the sky had darkened, the full moon taunting him with cheeky glimpses behind dense clouds. The smog around the old buildings had thickened moderately, curling even closer around Quentin and the fake structures all around him; the effect reminded him of when he emptied the contents of those murky reagents into the campfire, in the hopes of concealing himself and the others in the trials for protection.

 

The dream was warm, now.

Far too warm to be Quentin’s own world anymore.

 

_“Quin…”_

 

He paused, hands placed on the exit gate switch. Quentin already knew deep down that he couldn’t open them, not here - the action was simply an instinct, a safety net to try and pull him back from the panic he was trying to conceal. Perhaps if he could somehow get those gates open, the Entity would let him return to the campfire. Back to David, and Meg, and everyone else. Back to where he couldn’t be hurt while he was awake and alive-

 

_“Quentin.”_

 

The panic had truly set in now. There was no hope of simply opening the gates while the dream world was no longer under his control, so Quentin whirled himself around and backed up against the gates, eyes wide as he tried to look for a potential escape or his wily tormentor. If he can see where the dream demon came from, perhaps he could run away, or figure out how to wake up in time.

The Entity surely wouldn’t allow him to die outside of a trial, right? It would never reward the monsters in such a handsome way; not even the ones who were clearly obsessed with singular quarries, targeting only them and ignoring everyone else in favour of slaughtering their object of obsession.

The thought calmed Quentin slightly. Not enough, though. It was never enough.

 

**“Quentin.”**

 

“You can’t hurt me here!” Quentin yelled into the fog, adrenaline giving way to newfound fervour. “You know damn well It wouldn’t allow that! You can’t have me, or her, anymore!”

There was no reply back. A single dark chuckle emanated from the fog, but no matter how much Quentin peered through the clouds he couldn’t make out a thing. He faintly heard the sharp blaring sound of the gate switch finally turning itself on behind him, but as soon as he turned his head he quickly whipped it back around at the crunching of footsteps on the moulded grass before him.

Quentin adjusted his stance against the gate switch slightly so he could continue to hold down the handle. The Entity must be interfering with this dream, of course it would be. It simply wouldn’t allow Quentin to be killed here, right? This whole charade was just an act to convince Freddy to perform better, right? He couldn’t be hurt here. It was just a dream.

...right?

The switch gave one last mighty groan before the gates finally began to pull open, leading the way back to the campfire. Of course, it wasn’t real - it was likely just a representation of waking up back to the _real_ campfire - but Quentin instinctively began to make his way towards it. The smog from the fake Springwood drifted inwards to the escape, still clutching at Quentin’s sneakers. Funny; it almost looked like it wanted him to _stay_.

Quentin dared to take a quick glance back at the ghostly little preschool. Just to be safe.

…

_What?_

 

The sky and the smoke had all returned to normal. Well, at least as normal as a nightmarish version of the location could look, anyway.

The dense smog had receded back into the roads and returned to its normal uncomfortable thickness, and the moon had returned to cover the roof of the preschool in a sickly teal blanket. A perfect replicate of the ghastly little Springwood Quentin saw in the trials - and the faint feeling of being watched rinsed away to boot. 

… just blame it on the Entity. Probably fucking with him for dozing off when a trial was about to start, or something stupid like that. All it cared about was the damn trials. 

Quentin sighed, leaning up against one of the brick partitions to readjust his beanie. This world was so damn tiring - ironic, since it was a world of his own dreams, but still. Nothing adhered to the norm anymore. It was simply tiring to try and keep up with the Entity’s new rules or whatever shit it came up with to get the blood pumping. 

Quentin wearily eyed the preschool again, nervously laughing and rubbing his eyes to try and get himself to calm down. Of course it was just a trick, of fucking _course_. He began to turn around and head back, mumbling softly to himself.

“Maybe this is a sign I should lay off those meds from Claudette’s kit for a while, ha-”

 

...

 

It was **back**.

That malicious feeling of being _watched_ . He could feel those eyes _burning_ down his back, all over his _entire form_ . He started to retch - it was a sickening feeling, a _horrid_ , **disgusting** feeling. A feeling that was only shared by him and his preschool classmates from all those years ago.

And Nancy would have known it oh so well, too, wouldn’t she?

The smog was drawing back in, now. It was encircling even closer than before; Quentin couldn’t see, couldn’t hear _anything_ . He floundered around, looking desperately for the campfire that he saw _just_ a few seconds ago, that he _knew_ was there…

But when he backed up, all he felt was the taller, more menacing form of somebody else behind him. Somebody he didn’t dare to look at.

 

_“Why the tears, Quin? You need to be a big boy and save those. You won’t want to be all tuckered out when I start with you, wouldn’t you?”_

 

He didn’t even have time to scream before he felt the long knives pierce his chest, through the thick layers of bloody and dirt-coated fabric with such terrifying grace and ease.

He could see them sticking out, now, in the lower corner of his vision. Oh God, oh _fuck_ , the blood was _everywhere_ . The dirt path beneath him quickly became flooded with the red liquid, the disgusting smog becoming thick and clogged with the overpowering stench of flesh and gore. It was just like - no, worse than - being impaled with the meat hooks that every survivor feared each trial. Quentin feverishly gripped at the sharp knives with his hands, hoping, no, _begging_ to make it stop. Make it STOP. **S T O P**.

All he was managed to succeed with was cutting his hands to ribbons, adding to the downpouring waterfall of crimson that was already pooling around his feet. The laughter didn’t stop.

 

_Please._

 

...

 

Why?

 

These worlds were safe. The Entity wouldn’t allow this. Surely it wouldn’t. _Surely_ . It was against the rules; the rules that the Entity Itself wrote with its own hands. Did it have hands? It didn’t matter. The point is, there are _rules_.

However, as Quentin was allowed to fall harshly onto the bloody ground, he could only fathom one thought as he finally closed his eyes.

_The rules have been changed._

 

He woke up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so
> 
> basically i spent like 3 hours chugging lucozade at 2am and wrote 6 pages of planning in a sugar filled frenzy and i said to myself, "you know what? you better stick through this you fat bastard. you better write this you fucking coward"
> 
> and here we are
> 
> strap up folks, its gonna be a long ride
> 
> huge kudos to @gayshina for beta reading!
> 
> (i am more active on my tumblr than this account, feel free to talk to me over there with any criticism or suggestions - ourna-kokichi.tumblr.com)


	2. Rise and Shine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All is not well back at the campfire.

Although Quentin had come to despise the campfire he constantly found himself waking up to, the familiar glow of the flames almost seemed like a blessing to see this time around.

He inhaled sharply, eyes skittering over his surroundings as he moved feverishly to get into an upright position; an action which almost seemed to hurt. He felt his hands ache and scream against him as he finally dragged himself into sitting up. He had to make sure he was back in the real world - the one place he knew Krueger absolutely couldn’t harm him.

No matter what bullshit the Entity was up to this time, there would be no way to make him vulnerable while he was awake.

 

That would just be _cheating_.

 

After scanning the clearing and deciding that yes, he was _definitely_ awake and still in one piece, Quentin took a moment to collapse back against the ground and pull his tattered beanie over his eyes. The dull thud of his body moving against the ground suddenly spiked a new world of pain - did he land against a rock or something? The panic and adrenaline from the encounter still hadn’t worn off fully yet, but the others didn’t seem to be around; they must be in a trial. Or maybe just dicking around in the forest? It’s not like they have much else to do in their downtime...

Either way, they weren’t here, and for once? Quentin was glad. He couldn’t let any of them see him like this.

He groaned in frustration, pulling up his hat slightly to scratch at his groggy eyes. His face felt wet. It made no sense - why would It change the rules it had already so meticulously written? Quentin knew the Entity was a fickle thing from his own dealings with the bloodweb he was gifted, but honestly? This took the fucking cake. None of the other survivors who came here with their own monsters had ever described anything like this happening to them.

Quentin huffed irritably, leaning back against the rumpled leaves in contemplation. He did not deserve this. No matter what that disgusting demon of a man claimed otherwise, he did _not_ deserve this.

Initially he hadn’t noticed the faint rustling of the leaves further behind him, distracted by his own pondering on the situation at hand. But when a faint, drowsy voice suddenly piped up, Quentin lurched upwards in surprise - until he looked behind him to see who it was.

“Christ on a bike, Quin, can ya keep it down?” David muttered, arms stretching lazily from his chosen spot by the treeline. “It’s been _ages_ since I’ve had a good kip.”

“Ah… I’m sorry,” Quentin stammered, ducking his head down in shame. He must have woken David up from his movement over the leaves; naturally they would be the driest due to his proximity to the flames. “I thought I was alone this time.”

While Quentin expected annoyance for causing the somewhat rude awakening, David simply laughed and turned over, putting his hands behind his head in mock comfort. He didn’t look tired at all - in fact, his grin almost seemed to imply that-

“Dude, you shoulda seen the look on your face!” the scrapper guffawed, picking himself up from his perch and wandering over to the fire, sitting down next to the ardent dreamwalker. “The others left a while back. Figured you’d want someone to stay behind in case you started fidgeting around again, or somethin’. I know how it gets-”

David paused, prompting Quentin to look back at him with a questioning gaze. He was staring _right_ at his face, with a look that Quentin guessed was some sort of mixture of confusion and anger. Or was it horror? He knew that his face tended to get a bit dirty from time to time by proxy through the trials, but everyone was used to it by now. David could handle a little dirt.

He… he didn’t have something on his face, did he?

“Quentin,” David suddenly began, bringing up both hands to grip at the smaller man’s shoulders firmly. “ _Who_ did this to ya?”

David never acted like this outside a trial, and it was beginning to scare Quentin. What the hell was he talking about? Neither of them had been sent to one recently, and Quentin didn’t recall earning any lasting injuries - Claudette always found a way to patch them up perfectly. The Entity must have given her a talent for it.

“I’m sorry, I… don’t know what you mean?” Quentin nervously replied, shaking his shoulders slightly to try and relieve himself from the deathgrip that the other man was holding him in. David let go, letting out an exasperated sigh as he brought up his hands to point directly at Quentin’s face instead.

“Your fuckin’ _face_ , dude. Looks like someone lamped ya good an’ proper, doesn’t it?”

Truly confused at this point, Quentin began to bring up his own hands to check for some sort of leaf or dirt - God, they fucking _ached_ \- and gently rubbed at his own face. What did lamped even _mean_? Strangely, he couldn’t find anything too out of the ordinary from his own touch; but the action almost seemed to make his face more wet than before.

“What the hell…” he mumbled, reaching to rub at his face again. Before he could, however, David hastily grabbed his arm before he could touch it again. Quentin gasped in surprise, almost about to ask David what the _fuck_ he was so surprised at-

Until he brought the offending hand directly to his face, making Quentin stare at it.

It was sliced up to the extreme - pieces of muscle and torn skin _all over_ it. What used to be running blood appeared to have dried, caking the limb in a thick coverlet of crimson that Quentin finally recognised the metallic smell of. He could still move it, thank _God_ , but now that the adrenaline of his waking had finally worn off it was absolute _agony_ to even move his pinky anymore. He couldn’t even fathom the idea of lugging open the exit gates with these wounds, or even scouring chests for those precious medkits to keep himself alive.

Claudette was going to have an absolute field day with this.

He looked to his right, realising (much to his chagrin) that his other hand had suffered a similar fate, if not _worse_. It hadn’t stopped bleeding completely yet in some areas, leaving the rest to be encrusted in a similar blanket of red to the other. Some of the dried chunks had begun to cling onto his jacket sleeves, and in his sleep he seemed to have managed to rub the exposed skin raw from it. The wet blood overlapped some areas of the dried, creating a repulsive texture of moist gore to accompany the coarse smell of ichor in the air.

Quentin was thankful that he was too distracted to pay attention to the smell at the start - if it wasn’t for his state of shock, he would most likely be retching at the stench alone.

If this was the state of his hands, he didn’t want to look down to see what his chest looked like now.

The initial unease from Quentin’s own awakening had fully worn off now, replaced with a fully fledged sense of trepidation and alarm. Of course, he was still _slightly_ embarrassed for falling for such a simple prank from David, but right now? That was the least of his problems. He glanced briefly back over at David, who was still eyeing him expectantly for answers, taking a moment to consider exactly how he was going to spin this tale.

David had a fierce streak - it was something he retained from his boxing days, before he came here. He did everything he could to protect the few friends he still had, getting rowdy and even attempting to fight with the killers directly when someone was in danger. If Quentin told him the truth, told him he wasn’t _safe_ anymore, who _knows_ what sort of danger David would get himself into on his behalf.

It wasn’t endearing anymore. Freddy was a threat, and he needed to act fast to win again this time; the Entity had already chosen who It would be supporting. The collateral damage to his friends could be devastating if he let them intervene.

 

But then again…

 

The Entity wouldn’t want all of the survivors hurt, would It? Nobody would be able to take part in the trials if so - the killers would have too much of an advantage to make it fun to spectate anymore. Quentin knew Freddy and the ways that his obsession worked, but he only had a connection to Quentin alone in his dreams. He couldn’t hurt the others. At least, not the way he was hurting him; anything that happened in the trials would be fair game.

Was it worth the risk, though? His friends here were all he had left, now that he was trapped...

No. He was the only one to dreamwalk here. He needed to deal with this alone. He needed to keep them _safe_. If he held off Freddy in the preschool once before, he could do it again.

“Just some... unlucky hatchets. It’s no big deal.” Quentin lied, turning back towards the crackling flames and lowering his gaze. “I wanted to get everyone out safe - just like you taught me. Claudette will probably, uh, help me out when she’s back… you don’t need to worry about it.”

David dropped the hand he was holding, eyebrows scrunching up in disbelief - Quentin had never flat-out _refused_ to tell him if something was wrong. The two of them had stuck together through thick and thin, regardless of if it was in the trials or just at a disagreement at the campfire with the others. Hell, Quentin had even trusted David with the knowledge and power of the dream world; his only respite from the torment of the Entity. Something was _definitely_ wrong, and extremely so.

He was also just an awful liar in general.

“...Right.” David replied, disbelief clearly laced into his words. “Didn’t realise ya got dragged into a trial while I was sleepin’.”

Quentin winced slightly from the retort, but otherwise stayed still in his position by the fire. Exhaling in displeasure, David took his gaze back towards the treeline. With nobody else back yet from a trial, the now-sour atmosphere was beginning to feel slightly awkward as the two sat in silence - one thinking about how to further pursue the conversation, and the other lamenting their poor choice in lies.

David cleared his throat, looking off to the side of the treeline as he tried to carefully compose his words. He knew there was little left in the world that could have made Quentin withdraw himself so suddenly - he had been through a hell of a lot before he even arrived here, from what he was told. With the knowledge of what David had been trusted with, it wasn’t too hard to narrow down a suspect.

There were very few things that could have harmed Quentin while he was asleep like this, after all.

“It’s ‘im again, isn’t it?”

He didn’t speak, but Quentin’s eyes moved upwards slightly, the small movement giving the answer away immediately.

 

_Shit._

 

Quentin hadn’t divulged too much information about what Krueger actually did to him, and David wasn’t the type to pry; all he knew was that he had been hurt when he was very young. David didn’t understand fully, but he tried to. He _wanted_ to - Quentin was his friend after all, wasn’t he? The dream demon had been vile enough to catch the Entity’s attention in the first place, so whatever was happening in the dream realm where his abilities were amplified surely couldn’t be anything good.

David was no dreamwalker. He couldn’t compare to Quentin in that regard, not now or ever. But he _could_ help in the only way he knew how - in the one regard that he knew he was the best at.

“Look, Quin,” he began, closing his eyes. “We’re mates. And mates _help_ each other out, don’t they?” He moved back towards Quentin, leaning in to try and coax a reaction out of him.

“I _know_ I can’t do all this dream stuff you can do, all that controllin’ and shit. But,” he punctuated, placing his hand gently onto Quentin’s shoulder. “I’m right _here_ , lad. Let me help.”

Quentin smiled gingerly at the notion, but quickly reverted back to staring towards the flames a second time. David put up a convincing argument - he was a charming bastard when he wanted to be - but he still wasn’t completely sold to the idea yet. Did he really want to put David in danger like this?

“David, it’s... not that I don’t trust you. But,” Quentin pauses, trying to find the right words. “It’s not safe. Look, yeah, I _know_ you don’t care about yourself as much as the rest of us but I just… don’t wanna to drag you into this.”

The boxer could hold his own for sure, no doubt about that; it wouldn’t exactly be the first time he would have gone out of his way to harass one of the killers mid-trial. But this wasn’t just about making their ‘job’ a living hell. If Quentin was to guess, David’s solution would probably end up with some sort of ragtag A-team dream protection squad, and he really didn’t have the time or energy to teach anyone else how to get through the veil to the dreamworld for that.

It sounded pretty funny though.

“Yeah, right,” David scoffed, puffing up his chest in mock preparation for battle. “Whoever messes with my mates messes with _me_.”

He then leaned in closer, his playful demeanor suddenly wearing off to become more serious. Quentin jumped slightly, the change surprising him - he _really_ did mean business now.

“Now, tell me what you can remember. All of it. I’m not lettin’ some sick bastard terrorise _my_ mates.”

Now _this_ was the David King that everyone in the campfire depended on.

God, he wanted to tell him. He knew that David meant well, he could handle himself. He could _help_. But no matter how he spun it, Quentin’s eyes shut tighter in response with a pained grimace.

He didn’t _want_ to remember - remembering the wrong things was the root of all the events that got him here in the first place, after all. He picked at his jacket gingerly with shaking hands as he kept his eyes closed. It was like some twisted version of the events that happened back in the real world, reenacted with crippling déjà vu in a place where he had no say in what was happening.

This is _such_ fucking bullshit. So fucking unfair. Laurie never had anything like _this_ happen to her.

But it had still happened, hadn’t it? And he was left to deal with it now. He opened his eyes slightly, hands still gripping at his jacket. He _needed_ to tell David. If only for some small sense of comfort; he needed that more than ever down at the campfire, wearily awaiting the time he would be called to a trial again.

“Quentin?”

He was probably going to regret this further down the line, but right now? He could use some support.

Quentin raggedly let go of the breath he wasn’t even aware he was holding, piquing David’s attention again. He looked up, making eye contact with the concerned man beside him.

 

“He found a way through, David. And he found _me_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell that i suck at dialogue
> 
> sorry for the delay, was on a trip a few days back and it messed with my writing motivation - as always big thanks to @gayshina for beta reading!
> 
> (i am more active on my tumblr than this account, feel free to talk to me over there with any criticism or suggestions - ourna-kokichi.tumblr.com)


End file.
